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I'm home in Rochester after a whirlwind couple of days. After Sunday's very successful pair of tours, I thought I had two days to fill in the two Smiths Island sites, finish bagging up all the artifacts and put them into storage, and return all the BNT's archaeology equipment. I got to work Monday morning and was just getting ready to head out with wheelbarrow and shovels when Garth's wife relayed a phone call that my wife had sent a panicked emailed informing me that I had booked my flight for Tuesday, rather than Wednesday as I had thought (a typo, I think, made back in February when I booked). I'm the first to admit I'm an Absent-minded Professor, better able to remember dates from 300 years ago than keep track of my meetings next week - but the upshot of the news was that I now had only about 10 hours to entirely close up the dig! Man, I could have used Moto-Trowel Mimi or Mike that day... As the day was hot, humid, and breezeless I paced myself to get throu...

I've been quite busy taking part in St. George's 400th anniversary weekend. Yesterday I gave two well-attended lectures at the World Heritage Center on Earliest Bermuda, 1612-1625, reviewing the formidable challenges that settlers and the Virginia/Bermuda Companies faced in planting a successful colony here and some of the key assets that Bermuda's first white and black settlers brought to the table. It is quite remarkable how quickly a viable community linked through shared work, civil institutions, and religious commitment emerged, and how quickly English and African arrivals became Bermudians. I also joined about 60 others for a commemorative photo aboard the replica of the Deliverance  - can you spot me? Today (Sunday), Alexandra and I gave tours of the two Smiths Island archaeology sites to two groups that came by boat - about 70 in all in two waves. Alexandra at CHB Me explaining (or doing a Performance Art/Interpretive Dance at) Oven Site It was really fun showing of...

Whoever said working in the archives can't be as exciting as work in the field? I had a great day in the Bermuda Archives, returning to various collections I'd read in the 1990s but not since. In the morning I stumbled across a journal in the St. George's Historical Society collection written by Thomas M.B. Godet in 1841, chronicling a Bermudian's tour of the United States. Turns out young Tommy went to NYC and then on to Albany and the Erie Canal. He visited Rochester, Batavia, Lockport, and Niagara Falls by canal boat, early railroad and stage coach, which made me think of home. After lunch (a very tasty Oxtail Stew and Jerk Pork), I requisitioned the Goodrich Papers (1780s), a Virginia Loyalist who wound up in Bermuda during the American Revolution after being run out of Portsmouth by an angry Patriot mob. While trolling through the box to get to the Goodrich file, I found a privateer commission from 1740 for William Richardson's warship Anne, which had the intac...

On my last day of digging at Smiths Island (also alone, on the 10th), I was bound and determined to finally get to the eastern tip of the island to verify that the 1970s hydroponic farming did indeed level the area where there's now a stand of casuarina trees. The late historian Jack Arnell had speculated that Richard Moore, Bermuda's first governor (1612-15) might have built a battery there as a more handy alternative to Smiths Fort on Governor's Island. In reconnoitering the island for sites in 2010 we never got east of Smallpox Bay due to the thicket of intertwined Mexican pepper trees and poison ivy. But today I decided I'd DO IT! The elusive casuarinas of Smiths Island's East End, beckoning like a siren... Big Mistake, but I had hubris apenty that morning. The first hurdle was getting even as far as we could in 2010 - the field past the CHB site are now more matted with poison ivy than before, as well as a plethora of short stubby brush. I pushed on through thi...

On this day exactly 400 years ago, the Plough  brought Bermuda's first 50 deliberately sent colonists and anchored in Smiths Sound in mid-afternoon. The Three Sailors living on Smiths Island (whose house we're hunting for) made themselves known once they had ascertained that the ship was English and friendly (rather than Spanish and hostile). They celebrated together by going ashore at the first landing place they sighted (probably Vaughan's Bay in St. David's) and prayed and gave thanks for their safe arrival. From that moment in 1612 through today, Bermuda has developed, evolved, changed with the twists and turns of four centuries of world history, and become a whole lot more crowded, but Smiths Island retains a lot of the character of earliest Bermuda - a few unpaved paths, a handful of houses, and neighbours who know each other very well. Although there are far fewer cedars than there was in 1612 (thanks to the 1940s blight which killed off 99% of this quintessentia...

Or at least a field team of one - For the past few days I've been doing solo digging at Smiths Island to finish up some of the remaining features that appeared in the last days of the field school and also to excavate the hearth and oven. My family flew back stateside on Sunday, so it's just me and the dirt of Smiths Island! It's both peaceful and a bit lonely digging at Oven Site on my own - tranquil and quiet enough to hint at how Bermuda would have been 300 years ago, but only a few weeks ago the same squares  had happy bantering students and Mike keeping things sane - so their absence haunts the site. But the digging has been great: The mysterious feature cut into the east side of the hearth turns out to be a second, smaller oven. It was somewhat surreal excavating by flashlight sideways. The most interesting artifact turned out to be the remains of a shoe - an intact wooden heel with a reinforcing iron heel "U" (like a tiny horseshoe) and part of the leather ...

No, not our work boat, thankfully, but a long-deferred visit to the OTHER archaeology field school this summer in Bermuda - the Texas A&M excavation of the Bermuda Company Magazine ship Warwick , which sank in a hurricane in October 1619 in Castle Harbour. It was utterly fantastic! I had planned to take the U of R students to visit the site to learn about underwater archaeology and how it differs from what we were doing at Smith's Island. We had even scheduled a trip for the Infamous Sunday when the sudden storm called at Smiths Island - it was a good thing that we called it off due to rough seas, since the TAMU dive barge flipped over that day - its more exposed location left it open to 5-7 foot waves. Thankfully, they got it righted and got back on track within a week - and even got some hard-won insights into how the Warwick  might have broken up and its remains spread out as it sunk in 1619. Project Director Piotr Bojakowski was sorting out some tanks issues so didn't g...